2014

“Welcome to a special “Great Ideas” edition of our Saturday newsletter. Over the course of 2014, Govtech Today covered hundreds great deployments and cool new ideas. Here are some of our favorites.

Oakland App Sheds Light on Campaign FinanceAugust 28, 2014 – Gov Tech, Jason Shueh
“…residents got a clearer picture of mayoral candidates’ finances in the November election with an open data-powered transparency tool. The Open Disclosure platform pulled public data from a number of sources to provide a simple and timely analysis of candidates’ financial filings and major donors.”

Though a lot of jargon is thrown around, some of the people here have no tech backgrounds at all, including Anna Mathai. “I just wanted to know more about Oakland politics and budget,” she says. “Just about government. And I just find this to be a good forum to, I think, help foster transparency and open government. But also get plugged into what’s happening where, and what’s going to happen with the next election, and other initiatives.”

2013 – OpenOakland Expands

Oakland’s Public Participation Route to Open Data LegislationOctober 29, 2013 – The Sunlight Foundation, Rebecca Williams
“The Oakland public input process serves as an excellent example of the community’s role in generating open data policy, and an exemplar route to incorporating public perspectives into policy. ”

Civic hacking our way to a stronger democracyAugust 4, 2013 – The White House
“This is the heart of civic hacking for me: building new solutions and processes to replace broken ones, sharing our lessons and our successes and allowing others to benefit from our knowledge, failures, and shared technology.”

Most Innovative Activist Group July 16, 2013 –East Bay Express
“Oaklanders have always had a fierce penchant for community organizing. But until very recently, “grassroots activism” didn’t exactly conjure up the image of a bunch of self-described data nerds with their laptops in tow talking about code. But venture out to Oakland City Hall on most Tuesdays nights and you’ll find Open Oakland, a group of self-described “civic hackers” intent on using government data and technology to create better ways of engaging citizens. …”

Civic Minded HackingJune 11, 2013 – IEEE Spectrum, Travis Korte
“Oakland, Calif., ever the outlier, hosted the massively collaborative ReWrite Oakland event, in which more than 70 programmers, designers, city officials, writers and local residents came together to create a new community-oriented information website for the city… ReWrite Oakland provided a great model for this kind of collaboration, and other cities would do well to take note…”

Hacking Oakland’s BudgetApril 30, 2013 – East Bay Express, Ellen Cushing
“a new project that aims to use data visualization to give average people the tools they need to understand — and, in turn, get involved with — Oakland’s budgeting process, just went live a few days ago (in beta at least) and it’s pretty sweet.”

Urban activists hack their way toward open governmentMarch 30, 2013 – Ars Technica, Cyrus Farivar
“City officials see CFA and other parallel hacktivist projects, like OpenOakland, as a welcome (and low-cost) effort to aid a city under strain. They don’t expect technology to solve all of the Oakland’s problems, but they believe it might alleviate a small portion of the city’s challenges.”

Early Fruits for International Open Data Day 20132/25/2013 – Atlantic Cities, Emily Badger
“This past Saturday was International Open Data Day, and with it came hackathons hosted in dozens of cities on five continents all simultaneously tinkering with apps, visualizations, data catalogs and new standards built on the world’s growing trove of public data. Of course, put a bunch of mapping geeks and civic hackers in a room – many rooms, all over the world.”

OpenOakland to host community hackathon Feb. 23 2/19/2013 – Oakland Local, Samuel Felsing
“In Oakland, community group OpenOakland, will host its own Open Data Day celebration. The event, dubbed a “hackathon,” will be held at the 81st Avenue Branch of the public library. All Oakland residents are encouraged to attend — with designers, coders, statisticians and city staff members being especially welcome.”

Cracking Oakland’s Code – Can a group of hackers figure out new answers to the city’s old problems?1/2/2013 – East Bay Express, Azeen Ghorayshi
“I think one of the biggest problems we’ve faced is that whenever government operates in a closed fashion, it just asks for and results in distrust and concern that government isn’t doing what it’s meant to be doing and isn’t willing to be questioned,” said OpenOakland’s Steve Spiker. “But there is a love for this city that’s very strong and very rich, and it’s got a history of social activism that’s carried over in a lot of ways to the tech community.”

2012 – OpenOakland starts up

City Hall starts its Open Gov, Open Data journey with City Camp OaklandDecember 6, 2012 – Oakland Local, Howard Dyckoff
Steve Spiker: “CityCamp Oakland was about supporting open government and we all witnessed some genuine interest in seeing this happen from city staff with a real desire to partner with us and others to make this happen. Our team put a ton of effort into creating an event to show appreciation to our city staff and to create a safe, encouraging place for us all to have open, frank conversations about how we can all collaborate to make our city even greater, for all our residents, not just the tech community.”

Meet Our Vanguard: Stephen Spiker10/8/12 – Next American City, Kate Holmquist
Stephen Spiker is brigade co-captain for the new start-up OpenOakland, a volunteer group of hackers, software engineers and civic advocates who build open source technology to tackle civic issues that government doesn’t have the resources to undertake. Spiker loves data, democracy and design. Oh, and he’s a new dad, too.